Book Burro brings your local library into Amazon April 17, 2007
Posted by Paolo in : Cool tools , 1 comment so farWouldn’t it be cool if while you were looking at books in Amazon’s online store you could see whether Duke Libraries have the book? Well, you can. A tool called Book Burro (bookburro.org) does just this.
It only works with the Firefox browser, so if you’re using Internet Explorer or other browsers you’re out of luck (there are many reasons why you should try out Firefox, but that’s another blog post). You install the browser plugin (or “add-on”, as they’re now called in Firefox 2) and configure it with your zip code and online book stores you like to use.
Then, whenever you’re looking at a book record in Amazon, you’ll see an overlay in the top left corner of your browser that looks like this:
When you click on the little triangle on the left, the overlay will expand and look something like this:
What displays here depends on how you’ve configured BookBurro (using the tools icon near the right side of the BookBurro overlay). If you’ve put in your zip code, it will show you which libraries in the vicinity have the book - the search includes all libraries at Duke, UNC, NCCU, and many other universities in the region, as well as local public libraries.
Depending on how you’ve configured it, BookBurro will even show you how much the same item costs at other online stores. So you can quickly decide whether to head to your local library, make a request via Inter Library Loan, or order the book from an online vendor and have the book delivered directly to you.
Duke Libraries does not produce or support BookBurro, so we can’t vouch for how well it will work all the time, but so far it’s been pretty handy for me. Try it out - if you don’t like it, it’s easy to uninstall.
Overheard at The Perk April 14, 2007
Posted by Joan in : Librarians, Research Help , 1 comment so far“I spent seven hours in the library yesterday, researching, and I only found four articles!”
Painful words for any librarian to hear. But wait! Was the subject of research truly something obscure and unknown? Some potentially unexplored but fruitful area of discovery? Sadly, no, the topic of research (further eavesdropping revealed) was a common medical issue well covered by a range of library databases.
A stop at the reference desk could have saved this undergraduate hours of suffering. It can be intimidating to approach a librarian to ask for help, but most librarians are quite friendly, and all of us want to help you do your research better. If you’re not sure what to ask, just tell us about your research, and we’ll be glad to point you in the right direction.
Catalog tip - search for journals only April 4, 2007
Posted by Phoebe in : Catalog Tip , add a commentSometimes you’re looking for a journal that has a really common title - the classic is “Time,” the weekly news magazine. If you look it up in the catalog using “title begins with” you get 43 results to wade through. But choose the second tab, labeled “Journals/Serials” and you can cut down the number of extraneous results - a search for “Time” this way gets only 10 hits, most of which are different versions of Time magazine.
The “Journals/Serials” tab also be very helpful when you want to find some titles of journals that cover your topic. For example, a subject keyword search for “neonatology” brings up a list of 16 journals that publish on the topic - very useful for browsing when you’re starting to research a topic.
This tab is also great for when you can’t quite remember the title of a journal - use keywords or subject keywords to try to narrow it down.
Librarians on Facebook? April 2, 2007
Posted by Joan in : Librarians , add a commentIn a Writing 20 library session the other day, a student was shocked when I mentioned my Facebook account. “Is that even allowed?!” he asked.
Indeed, like an alien invasion, librarians have descended upon Facebook. Why are we there? Partly for the same reasons you are: to connect with students, you, but also to connect with faculty and other librarians, at Duke and beyond.
Why befriend a librarian in Facebook? Well, why not? You use Facebook to keep track of your friends, so consider using Facebook to keep track of your favorite librarian. Make a librarian a friend, and you’ll never lose track of her (or his!) name and email.
Some librarians currently in Facebook, along with their subject areas, include
- Margaret Brill, British and Canadian Studies
- Carson Holloway, Military History
- Anne Langley, Chemistry
- Catherine Shreve, Public Policy and Political Science
- Jean Ferguson, Reference
And, yours truly, Joan Petit: I’m there too.
